The year that was….Regretful departure of former Attorney General, seen returning betting slips and IOU’s to Crown Casino in lieu of blind trust.
Dear reader, we return to our saga.
Our heroes Ces and Quent in company with arguably Australia’s bravest and most decorated soldier ever ‘Benny-Boy’ Ben Roberts Smith. Prisoners to arguably the most powerful woman on the bench of the Fair Work Commission, Sophie (‘I never pushed the old duck over’) Mirabella. Will they be pawns to her Machiavellian Machinations? Has their time run out? Will Sophie come the raw prawn and have em cooked, slotted, sliced and diced? Find out in this next thrilling episode: More blind than a blind trust, or, when you’re carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, where’s you’re Christian Porter?
Waiting for the old PMG phone to answer is testing their nerve. Sophie, greedily picking up the accumulated florins and shillings before stuffing them into her glow-mesh and diamond studded handbag, (a keepsake from Gina), has a machine pistol levelled at them whilst the other hand clutches the receiver. It’s all a bit NBN, nothing is happening, but expectations are high.
Ces and Quent reflect on why Sophie is doing this? Why hadn’t they been slotted before, ? Could it be that as prisoners who knew too much they could be useful?
Regretful departure of Glady’s who is yet to be offered a vacancy on the fair Work Commission.
The phone to be un-answered, could be their ticket to freedom. The rail-tracks vanished into the gloomy distance, and the cavernous, desiccated void filled them with a feeling of dread. A dread undiminished by the hope that perhaps the subterranean rail way gave them a slim chance of escape. Though they knew that rail travel in Australia since the standard gauge was implemented at Albury in the 70’s was in serious decline.
They waited, and waited some more, Sophie clung to the receiver,
Although we had no idea whom she may be talking to we gathered it must be someone right up to the top of the line, perhaps Angus, and then upon consideration of the surreality of this situation, perhaps Xi himself? In the age of super-computers, warp speed and quantum computers the irony was excruciating. Here we were stuck deep down below with a PMG pay phone. It was like Scomo’s climate policy, cept this didn’t have the glossy brochures. It was, at the end of the day….. just a phone.
P.M texts former Test Captain Tim Paine a condolence message and offers him a possie on the bench of the Fair Work Commission.
With Sophie’s index finger poised over the ‘A’ button. We waited for an answer. Every atom of our being twitched in anticipation. All we could hear was the electric hissing of wires bleached and desiccated out on top. Somewhere along the vastness of the sun-bleached Nullarbor. Somewhere, some-place, on the end of the line was perhaps an individual. Perhaps even an individual like ourselves. Lost, isolated and caught up in a spiralling web of international destiny and interplanetary intrigue. Mere prawns upon the pan strategic chess-board. Chess board, or cheeseboard, if we waited much longer we’d go off!
We waited. Then all of a sudden the line went ‘click’ and we could hear something on the end of the line. Our hearts raced. there was something on the other end and unlike the NBN it WORKED! And through the ether, the reliable PMG handset allowed all of us to hear something on the end of the line. On, (for repeated emphasis) on the end of the line. It seemed by the sound of an ancient tape recorded message.
And it went like this;
“ You have dialled the joint Anglo-Australian testing facility at Maralinga. This is a restricted site and only personnel accredited with the Australian Nuclear Taskforce and provided with full and certified AUKUS clearance may proceed beyond this point. To do so will result in a criminal prosecution, fines to the order of five hundred pounds and a criminal conviction under the Enemy Aliens and Person of Suspect Skin Colour Act of 1955.
Please wait whilst we attend to your call’.
Sad, tragic, and epoch making departure of Alan Jones, contender for Fair Work Commission?
And as soon as it started we could hear the the song from Blue Hills, clearly this tape was very old and it was a wheeze that amongst us, it was Ces and I who could whistle along and ask ourselves, why Blue Hills? Until it dawned upon us that it was binary code. Beamed out into the void on magnetic tape. Wireless all those years ago, ever reliable as the communications standard for anglosphere operatives. It all made sense. Sophie was at the head of something so ancient, it as positively new and refreshing. Like AUKUS it was grounded in EMPIRE!
‘Well Sophie, how long do you think we’ll have to wait’? Ces enquired?
‘Shut up fuck-face you’ll wait your turn, and let me concentrate!!!
Sophie was the personification of concentration, she held the receiver as if her life depended upon it, and in the background the theme to Blue Hills was replayed, “ please wait and your call will be answered, the dull phrase repeated itself again and again. We waited, and besides, down here what else could we do?
Regretful departure of ‘Member for Manilla’, George Christiansen. “The Colossus”, (cepting Clive Palmer) of Queensland. A cert for Fair Work Commission.
What were we waiting for? Where’s Samuel Becket when you need him? If he was existentialist we were hypo-existential and our situation beyond surreal. The waiting had become a torment, yet we knew that the long wait. Like Scomo’s world breaking climate policies when this was all over it would feel like it they almost didn’t exist. The questions remained unchallenged. Do we exist? What is existence? And was AUKUS around in 1955? Why hadn’t we heard of it only recently when Scomo snotted the French President? Existentialism, isn’t that a French concept? Why aint it a swear word yet? Don’t be fooled by a silly old Kant. Existentialism like climate change is crap. Find out in the next horological episode; ‘a ticking time bomb might never go off’, or ‘the hands of time might have Parkinson’s’.